By my estimation, the collapse of the community would be “letting the trolls win.” Having seen the aftermath of the particular group on other communities, it would not have been pretty.

Don’t feed the trolls, y’know?

It is unfortunate that the way things shook out meant that cool people weren’t able to join the server as quickly as desired, though

I have seen it, yes. It looks neat :)

I feel it a little unfair to call the discord situation “bonkers”—there were understandable reasons to institute it.

As it is, the process changed recently to let people in faster :)